about this course…

This course will provide students with insight into the contemporary practice of corporate communications. It first examines the importance of effective communications with internal and external stakeholders in an enterprise, utilizing illuminative examples of both bad and good practice. Students will then be introduced to key relevant concepts from communications and design theories. In light of these, evolution of professional practice in response to transformative developments in information and communications technologies will then be explored rigorously. The profound implications of shifts from rationed broadcast media to social media and user-generated content are considered; along with the contemporary ubiquity of media and strategic communications.

This course is rather novel in its application of recent design thinking to the corporate communication function in the context of a rapidly changing environment of such professional practice. The course itself is exploratory, experimental and evolutionary and will make use of examples from a number of cultures and languages. A high standard of student engagement with a range of learning materials and exercises throughout the semester is expected, and grading policy will reinforce this. The key predictor of student academic success in this course will not be English proficiency but rather individual commitment to the learning objectives and processes entailed.